ECC BUFFER REDUCTION IN A MEMORY DEVICE

A memory system includes a memory device and a memory controller. The memory device includes a plurality of memory cells. The memory controller includes an error correction code (ECC) circuit. The ECC circuit is configured to determine data rows of first write data that are not all zeros and store the determined data rows in buffer rows of a buffer along with corresponding row indexes. The memory controller is configured to write second data based on the buffer to the memory device.